Tuesday, January 31, 2012

As the primary continues on, a faint little thought came into my head the other day. While I do give props to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich for their extreme efforts to become the presidential nominee, I worry about the country as a whole. While yes, both Romney and Gingrich have multiple benefits of becoming president, they both lack security.

Romney cannot stick to one ideal, constantly changing his mind. And Gingrich lacks the ethics he needs to run a country. Yes, his affair is old news but old news or not, a good president needs good ethics.

So while I look at both candidates and see the positives they could bring to our country, I also see the negatives. Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are falling behind in the primary, so when it comes down to it, chances are Romney and Gingrich are the most probable candidates.

I feel the upcoming election will be a difficult vote and I unfortunately don't see many positive changes with whomever would win the presidential election. If only it were as simple as starting the primary all over again to find a better candidate with a better background, but obviously that will not happen.

While Romney and Gingrich are both superb speakers, I worry about the way this country will be run once the presidential candidate wins the race. All throughout the media, I see stories on who would be the best candidate to run against Obama, who would be able to win the presidential race. But I feel as if who would win against Obama, and Romney and Gingrich's debates against each other are covered more in the news than who would actually be best fit to be president.

So I hope soon in the news, there will be more coverage on that so I can get a better idea on how this country will be run in the upcoming years.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Chances are, you've seen Back to the Future, you've listened to some Journey, and you know what leg warmers are. Those three things basically sum up a fun, neon colored decade known as the 80's. I know what your thinking. That's in the past! Who cares about that stuff now?

Well my friend, think again. It seems like everything comes back around again for a second time in the spotlight. I just finished watching a new commercial with Matthew Broderick, where he reinacts Ferris Bueller for Honda. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love that movie, heck, and any other 80's hit. It's just funny how things people almost forgot about come right back.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Well now that midterms are over and the beginning of second semester begins, all the schoolwork is being pushed towards me again and all my reaction is, is "WHAAAAAAT!?"

See, the problem with midterms is they never actually come before winter break... They are always right after. This leads to that week after break where we are just coming back to school and there's not that much work. It's all just studying and maybe a little extra work here and there. But even if you get a lot of work, the next week is all half days and days off for midterm week.

So yet again, I get back into break mode. And trust me, I am the kind of person who does not procrastinate unless I really don't have the time. But when I am in break mode, I become just about the laziest person you would know. I say goodbye to my busy bee days, lie down in bed, and just watch Netflix for endless hours.

Call me lame all you want, but I know all you secret How I Met Your Mother fans do it too now that they have six seasons of it up onto Netflix. Best show ever, may I add? Anyway, back to the point.

I get into total break mode yet AGAIN during exam week (of course when I'm not studying, but that's simple stuff). And then I come back to school on Monday and what do I get? So much homework, it is unbelievable. Whoever said senior year is the year you get to relax was playing a pretty good prank on me.

But I don't know. I guess I would have the same reaction if midterms were before break and I came back to school to face all this school work. But I feel as if midterm week teases us, in a way that we get a two week break, come back to school for a week, then go on another short little break. Next thing I know I come back to school and I have extensive amounts of homework to do. I feel if midterm week was right before break and then we had break, it would just be one long break, instead of an erratic mess after midterms.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Valentines Day is coming up! So hooray for all those with a significant other and boohoo for all the singles? Not! Just because someone's in a relationship, doesn't mean they're happy, and just because someone is not in a relationship, doesn't mean they're unhappy. I'm tired of single girls complaining about their "lonely" lives. If you really feel that alone, go do something about it! Have fun, live a little! Who knows? Maybe while you're out enjoying yourself, you'll meet that perfect guy that'll give you what you always dreamed of.

Fun Ideas for Singles this Valentines Day:1. Go see the Vow

2. Go see Drake in concert

3. Have a "Valentines Day" movie night with friends

4. Bake cookies or cakes to pass out at school on V-Day

5. Make homemade Valentines Day cards to pass out (possibly to someone you secretly admire)

6. Enjoy it as if it were any other day (Because that's all it really is)

Soccer season has ended now and I finally have a break. I can come home now and have a nap before doing my homework. (Though I'm sure I'll be joining tennis next month.) Its nice to come home and relax. I have to get my priorities straight. I failed my AP Bio midterm and got a D on my APUSH midterm. I did so well in the quarters and now that's going to bring my semester grade down. *le sigh* Without soccer I think I'll be able to study more and pass my final exam this semester.

So, I've been saving my money up since Christmas to go to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. I absolutely LOVE them. When I first started checking for tickets, they were around 60 to 70 dollars. Eh. Then, as time went by and more tickets were being purchased, the price went up.

Now the cheapest ones I can find are about 130ish. Gah! And, on top of that, Anthony Kiedis had some medical meltdown, and has now pushed the tour back, from January 20th to April 2nd. I have not yet purchased tickets because I had to wait until Christmas to get all of my money (plus my mom contributing).

I kind of highly doubt I'll be able to go, since they are all sold out on Ticket Master (They say to keep checking closer to the event, so I check everyday.) And, on top of that, my alternative choice, Coldplay, is almost sold out, only seats with an "obstructed side view" are available.

This weekend, I decided it would be fun to fulfill my childhood wish: Plant a sunflower. I love sunflowers because of their bright colors and overall way of making a person smile. They can grow to tall heights and are often part of a picturesque setting. I planted my sunflower (Appropriately named Sunny) in a pot and found myself digging through a bag of freshly bought soil. I was never to fond of gardening, nor did I think I was good at it, but there's a good feeling knowing you are helping the environment and making it a cleaner place. I proudly watered my sunflower seed and hope that it will grow 9-12 inches, just as the bag it came in told me it would. Sunflowers should be exposed to full sunlight, unlike other plants, and they usually bloom in the summer time. Well, in 86 days I hope I can sit outside of my house and see Sunny the Sunflower soaking up the sunlight.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

This weekend, I went up to Sarasota to see my nephew. I ended up going to the USF campus over there to see how it was! It was a good experience for me because I've been planning on going to the Main Campus. It was good to see what what of the other campuses looked like, and it gave me an idea of staying with my sister until I have enough money for the Tampa campus.

After that day, I realized that college was just around the corner if I planned on going right after summer vacation. I need to start applying for scholarships and looking for ways to save up enough to go away for college! (:

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Almost any avid reader will tell you that a good book can take you into other worlds and transport you from day-to-day life to places where anything is possible. Even when you put the book down, the characters and the world they live in stay alive in your mind, just waiting for you to open up the book and keep reading.

But what about the feeling of emptiness after finishing a great story?

Today I finished "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, and I'm experiencing just that.

One of the first times I recall feeling this was in elementary school, when I read "Tuck Everlasting" by Natalie Babbitt. I devoured that book, waiting to see what happened at every turn of the page. But at the same time, I didn't want the story to end. When I finished the book, it left a void - I wanted more, more, more of the story, but there's was nothing left.

I've felt that way more times than I can count since then, but now that I'm in high school I have less time to read.

"The Kite Runner" renewed my love of reading. I hope from now on I'll make time to read, rather than reading when it is assigned for school, or when I have spare time and nothing else to do.

And to fill the hollow left by the end of one book, I'll just pick up another.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Yep. Instead of being saved by the bell, you can start using this new phrase far more often.

I bet there are a bunch of you out there like me, trying so hard in school, yet sometimes not understanding the teacher or the concept they are trying to teach.

So for those of you, if you haven't already figured this out: YouTube is more than just music videos.

For a while now, I've been coming back home after a confusing day in Chemistry or Pre-Calculus and have had no clue on how to start my homework, let alone pass my test the next week.

Then one day the idea suddenly occurred to me, "Maybe there are tutoring videos on YouTube!"

And behold: they actually were.

So now you have a whole new way to learn difficult or confusing concepts. You can even create a playlist of videos to study before a quiz or test!

Use it how you want to. Just search for a concept you want to learn about, like: "Limits in calculus". No need to get all specific and type "What are limits in Pre-Calculus?" because most times it won't show you what you are looking for.

Just use keywords in your search that go with directly what you want to learn about. but don't make it so general either, like: "Calculus". Or else you will get tons of videos right and left of things not pertaining to your particular search.

As a senior, this week is going to be terrible. It's going to only be a three day week, but by no means are these three days going to be easy. I've got a ton of review to finish, and hardly any time to finish it. Plus, i've got work, piano lessons, stories to write for my newspaper class, and I HAVE to watch the Golden Globes! Anyways, let's hope senioritis doesn't get the best of me. At this point though, the odds are not looking good!

Monday, January 9, 2012

Now that my time with the Common Application has come to its inevitable close, I'm starting the new year off right with a brief jaunt throught of scholarships. From typical essays and fill-in-the-blanks to creative projects like duct-tape dresses and short films, scholarship requirements are varied and often entertaining. I'm going to attempt to post scholarships regularly -- we'll see how this goes. But for a start, here are two upcoming contests:

Last year, 2011, was a great year in movies. (The King's Speech, anyone?) Now that we are at the start of a brand new year, it's a whole new chance for great directors and actors to shine in what could be the movie of the next 366 days.

The Hunger Games- This blood pumping adventure tale, set in the not so far future, cronicles Katniss Everdeen's trials and tribulations during the annual Hunger Games, a fight to death on national television. I am super pumped for this to come out (March 23rd whoop whoop!) since I've read the books (team Peeta all the way!), and I just can't wait to see it on the big screen.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2- Yeah, the whole vampire love story is getting a little drawn out and tiresome, but I'm still super excited for it, because I've read the books and am a fan. Plus, it'll be a whole lot more pleasant to watch now that the bloody birth scene is out of the way, am I right?

The Avengers- Okay, now how isn't this the perfect comic book movie? Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and ScarJo wrapped up into one action packed flick! I cannot wait to see this, since I am somewhat of a superhero nerd (I mean deep down inside, who isn't?) and I absolutely love Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower- I've just recently read this book, and I loved it. It was wonderfully written, and I just couldn't put it down. So, I'm so ready to see this, especially since it has the lovely Emma Watson, and the couldn't-get-better-looking Logan Learman (Percy Jackson) as the stars. This tale of a somewhat depressed teen is going to hopefully snag some Oscars this year, because I know the book sure deserves some awards.

Of course, documentaries have a certain way of manifesting themselves. You have some common elements - a very high-quality, "I hear it like it's right there"-effect audio voiceover, lots of miscellaneous shots of the interviewees walking around and doing other inane things like lifting their finger or raising an eyebrow, random music cues done to make the best out of long-winded shots that are necessary for the documentary to have any point as an informative piece ... well, you get the idea.

When I did my first-ever, almost feature length documentary - A Serpent's Tale, a documentary my school's band and color guard, I had a lot of moments in which making the film didn't feel the same way making a documentary should feel. Having worked on other (however, shorter) documentary style pieces since then, I've found that making a documentary should be like writing a term paper - you go through the motions of ensuring your information is correct, accurately and concisely presented, and most of all well organized and interesting; and after that you start chopping up your voiceover and playing with music cues and video FX in order to spice up those staid scenes or in order to add some welcome flair to what is otherwise a research paper on a television screen.

But when I was making A Serpent's Tale, I felt like I'd skipped that first part and gone straight to the second: in other words, I was in that "how do I make this fun and cool to watch on a TV screen" part way before I was supposed to. Namely, it was because, by the documentary being focused on a non-concrete subject (try the illegal immigration situation in the United States versus just "South Miami Senior High School Band and Color Guard"), going through the motions of presenting valid and well-told information wasn't really supposed to crop up to begin with. Call it a poor choice of documentary subject, or perhaps a poor level of storytelling prowess ... either way, I'm glad that I stuck it through to the end in order to be able to have this realization now.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

While I went on vacation in Arizona to visit family over winter break, I did more than just relax and catch up with loved ones. I ended up volunteering for two great organizations in one day, and it felt really good.

My uncle is a police officer, and the first day we got to Tucson he told me and my sister that we were going to come with him to two events that upcoming Saturday. I was excited, and I wondered what we would be doing there, for I haven't really done any volunteer work to that magnitude.

The first event that we went to was at a Target, and it was called Shop With a Cop. It works like this: each police officer is paired with an underprivileged family, and the children of the families are given $100 each to spend on whatever they want; clothes, shoes, toys, you name it. This event, which happens around Christmas time, was started around fifteen years ago. This year, they helped out about 300 underprivileged kids. I know what you’re thinking, how do they get the money to do this? Well, the Tucson Police Department raises money all throughout the year for this. "It shows the caring level of the officers." John Strader said, president of the Police Association, and head of this organization.

During the time I spent at Shop With a Cop, my uncle, my sister and I helped out 3 families pick out things they wanted for Christmas. Without this organization, a lot of these kids would get little to nothing for Christmas. It was very rewarding to me, as a person, because helping other people out, especially those who are less fortunate, is a wonderful thing. Just seeing the smile on those kids faces when they picked out all their toys was enough to warm my heart.

The second event we went to, was called The Shyann Kindness Project. It was held in a local elementary school, and was possibly the kindest thing I had ever seen in my entire life. It's named after Shyann Rosati, a kind-hearted little girl who died at the age of 7 in 2005. Shyann's parents were inspired to create this wonderful organization after a friend of theirs made a random act of kindness in Shayann's name after her death. It is a 100% volunteered organization, and I was lucky enough to be one of them for a day.

At Los Ninos Elementary School, the volunteers of TSKP along with the Civitan Club (an organization that helps mentally handicapped people, which my uncle and my grandpa are a part of) had prepared a full meal (pizza, chips and drinks) for dozens of unfortunate families, along with a free haircut for everyone, free oil changes for a year, a library full of free things that every family could fill a trash bag with (everything from DVDs to canned goods to toys) a magic show for the kids, and to top it off, a raffle with prizes like laptops, bikes, and gift cards to local grocery stores. I helped pass out chips to everyone, and I was just so happy to be there. There was so much love and kindness in the air, and never had I felt such pride to be a part of something.

After that amazing day ended, it made me realize that I want to do things like that a lot more often, because it's rewarding to me as a person, but most importantly, to others.

Today I realized that I'll be voting in the next election. It scares me to know that I'll be making a life changing decision soon. Most teenagers my age look at elections as a joke, as if having a bad President won't make a difference.. But I've realized that it's something the whole world should take part in. Let's say we choose a President that raises up the gas prices by $3 and sets regulations on everything we do. Or one who uses all taxpayers money and we see no good use to it.

My generation is already going to have a rough time because of all the debt we've collected and as we grow older, Social Security will soon become a problem as well.
Being in my AP Government class has taught me so much!

I now take voting seriously and I can't wait to vote on November 2012 (:

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!! I can't believe 2012 is here already; it's just so amazing how time flies by! I've spent the past couple of months finalizing and submitting college applications and it never really occurred to me until now that my high school career is coming to an end. This year, I will be experiencing a new life: College Life.I'm both excited and nervous at the same time after all, I've never lived anywhere else besides home. With that in mind, I only applied to Florida schools: University of Florida (UF), Florida International University (FIU), University of Central Florida (UCF), and University of South Florida (USF). So far, I've been accepted to UCF, USF, and FIU. I'll be spending the next final months of high school applying for scholarships and enjoying the rest of my senior year.As for New Year resolutions, I don't plan on making any for now. I figured that since there are going to be a lot of changes this year, I should just see how things go first and then make resolutions later. Although 2012 will be a year of new beginnings, I'm really looking forward to the new experiences life will have to offer. :)

Monday, January 2, 2012

Might be the inspiration for a short film. Wrote this myself for class. Enjoy!

I think of my father very often.When I decided, at some point during my senior year of high school at No. 35 in Tomsk, during one of those moments when you find yourself concentrating on anything but the task at hand, that I wanted to become a damn bookstore owner, there was a pretty unassailable belief that it was going to be a pretty lonely, pretty lacking-of-a-need-to-talk-to-people job. Pretty pretty pretty. Well, what isn’t pretty at all - it’s actually quite ugly - is that all of that ended up being true. People always assume, “that’s not going to be me.” It’s a pretty notion. Well guess what: take that pretty notion and stick it pretty deep down the toilet, so far in that taking it back out would require a team of highly skilled, hazmat-suit-wearing plumbers (if those even exist). Because pretty soon in life, you’ll realize that that notion is the ugliest lie you could tell yourself. I’m a bookstore owner here in Vladivostok, a city with a good amount of fanfare. Come 2012, we’re hosting the 24th summit of some economic association that in reality, the locals could care less about. On Wikipedia, there’s a pretty lengthy list of famous people that this city played host to, from Igor to Swati to Svoy to plain Vladimir. Then there’s me, running an antique bookstore on the corner of streets so abandoned and unkempt, it’s a wonder no cars fall straight through the ground. I love my job. I have a passion for the written word; for organizing, cataloguing, advertising, discussing it. I often spend hours in the inventory room, reading anything from Tolstoy to his contemporaries. So where do you think you’d find me on a foggy Thursday afternoon, way before I finally opened the bookstore? The shooting range, of course; a few blocks down from the bookstore nowadays, if you can believe that.I’m talking like you know me. Saying “pretty” this and “pretty” that, “of course” this and “of course” that. What a fool I am indeed. I’m repeating the same error that landed me in this god forsaken room. Being too open. My father was in the army. I’m guessing he fought in some war during some important time frame against some important enemy, but I could care less about what he fought in. The greatest enemy he ever had to face was me, just a few months prior to that Thursday when I told him off. Maybe it was machismo, maybe he was out of his mind; I don’t give. The point is he left my mother to fend for herself. She was a loving, simple woman that - god bless her soul - actually couldn’t fend for herself. She was scared of most everything. From something as stereotypical as spiders to something as unbelievable as making fish soup. Her parents coddled her, too much. The only fingers she lifted, she used to write the homework assignments she did every blue moon. Everything else was taken care of, even falsifying the school transcripts so her aunts and cousins wouldn’t think lowly of her.So when my father got ahold of her - or rather, prompted her to fall in love with him during a drunken stupor at a bar - he couldn’t put up with her incompetence, and he couldn’t live with himself for having been drunk at the most inopportune moment. I have no sympathy for him. But not because he left my good for nothing mother. But because he left me. I can’t blame him for not being able to put up with a woman who hadn’t worked a day in her life, but I sure can blame him for making like the wind when he found out she was pregnant. That army boy respect and reverence for all things moral and worth standing for flew out the window when those news came.Again!Again I treat you like you know me. Whatever, yeah, I’ve got daddy issues. So when a handsome man in a blue blazer, a lean, tall body, jet black hair pulled back tight, shades darker than black, khaki pants, a Rolex and an anchorman position on the local news station … well, I was swept off my feet. I didn’t know whether I wanted Mr. Anchorman to be my father, my boyfriend, my husband or my son. But of course, he swept me off my feet, and I told him all I’ve told you and more in less than 2 weeks of knowing him. If he had any doubt as to what kind of person I was, he didn't have to wait too long to figure it out, that’s for sure. If only that would’ve been reciprocal. Those 2 weeks that we spent painting the town red were beautiful, but mostly because between all my babbling, I didn’t let Mr. Anchorman get a single word in. I just saw his beautiful pearly white and shining blue eyes be the audience for my less than alluring stories of daddy issues, missed calls, failed dreams and bad diarrhea. But the day I stopped talking was the day I realized I was up the creek without a paddle. And the canoe was sinking. Mr. Anchorman didn’t know the first thing about his career - news, media literacy, investigative reporting, etc. I could’ve made a better television reporter than him, and I’d never laid eyes on a video camera. The day Mr. Anchorman was told he would have to do investigative reporting - one of those “budget-crunch-is-forcing-us-to-move-everyone-around moments” at big corporations - Mr. Anchorman quit. “What do you mean you quit?!”, screamed I, loud enough for the sound of the words to reach the center of the Earth.Freeze it there. Let’s have an homage to Mr. Anchorman. Suppose the shot is framed at just my face screaming. That’s a, extreme closeup, right? It’s definitely extreme anger. Now back up just one push of the button. Look here, it’s me and Mr. Anchorman, with a blurry background. His incompetent face versus mine. One more step. Medium shot, no? Wedding dress versus the nicest suit money or a pretty face can buy. Further out. Look at all those people looking on so attentively, the preacher in the background wearing an annoyed face.We don’t need to zoom out anymore; no, sir. Now I find comfort in the words of Tolstoy, here in this decrepit set of four walls that might as well cave in and take me with them anyday. At least you don’t have to work at a damn bookstore for that to happen.

As a reading enthusiast, I am always willing to read a book, even if the chances I will actually enjoy it are 50/50. Often when I'm searching the shelves of the library I disregard the cliche "don't judge a book by it's cover." I am always judging a book by it's cover. I figure, if I like the outside of the book, I might just like what's on the inside. This is obviously not how some people approach book choosing, but it works for me.

I'm a huge fan of any kind of fiction, I have found. My favorite authors are F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, and Oscar Wilde, to name a few. As much as I love the classic novels, a new kind of fiction has recently captured my attention; young adult fiction. The books I've read within this genre include the Mortal Instruments series, beyond entertaining and perfect for the fantasy loving book worm, The Hunger Games series, three novels that will have you on cliffs by the end of each and eager to read more, and my favorite of the bunch, The Carrie Diaries novels, featuring young Carrie Bradshaw from the infamous Sex and The City books, show, and films and her beginnings.

Of course, my book selection may not be the best for all people. Being a reviewer I understand that. But these books, being young adult novels, have so much in common with teenagers that you honestly have to read them to realize it. Even though we may not be fighting demons, or fighting for our lives in a nation-wide death match, we do have romance issues, dealing with our first loves, and we do have those annoying family fights, and essentially, the experiences that will teach us exactly what we need to know when we're on our own.

Ultimately, Carrie Bradshaw may not be the best heroine for all teenagers, but her and her friends, a.k.a. the characters in the novel, tell a fantastically entertaining story that all teenagers today can take tips from, just like other young adult books. No wonder the library has recently created a whole section for teenagers, the books are obviously special enough to relate to our own lives. So, i'm encouraging you to check out the latest novels out in the young adults sections of your library or book store, i promise you won't be disappointed. And go ahead and judge the book's cover!